Dear colleague,
We would like to draw your attention to the following session at the ESRA 2011 meeting:
Interviewer effects in telephone surveys
Telephone surveys represent a large proportion of quantitative data collection in the social sciences. Yet, there are serious concerns regarding many aspects of data quality, namely accuracy of answers, missing data and low response rates. In this session we are particularly interested in the effects of interviewers’ socioeconomic characteristics, behavior, training, conversational skills as well as convictional strategies and vocal characteristics: How do these variables link to data quality in telephone surveys? We regard the role of the interviewer and particularly their communicative behavior as especially important in telephone interviews: Due to the widespread practice of cold calling interviewers are the only source of information the respondent can use in his/her decision on survey response and subsequent information processing.
This session especially comprises papers that focus on interviewer effects in telephone surveys. Amongst others we are interested in effects of interviewers’ socioeconomic characteristics, behavior, training, conversational skills as well as convictional strategies and vocal characteristics. Presentations may for instance focus on unit and item nonresponse, response patterns or further respondent behavior such as survey satisficing or answering sensitive questions.
To submit a paper please visit the following website and follow the instructions:
http://surveymethodology.eu/conferences/
*Deadline January 14, 2011*
Henning Best & Gerrit Bauer